Attention aux emails

BEWARE E-MAIL- IT'S AS BAD FOR YOU AS SLEEP DEPRIVATION

The Grocer, August 18, 2019.

E-mail is a curse. Its interruptions seriously hamper concentration and productivity and the effect on IQ is as bad as smoking cannabis.  Unless you control it, e-mail is a menace that will control you, with disastrous effects on both work-life balance and productivity.

The amount of time it takes for a new technology to become a ubiquitous feature of every home and workplace is shrinking all the time - think how long it took the telephone or the  radio to become everyday objects, and in comparison how quickly the internet has spread. As a result the amount of time we have as a society to adjust to the change and develop new norms is now infinitesimal, which partly explains morbid side-effects such as happy slapping using mobiles.

A couple of years ago, an academic at the University of California called Gloria Mark did a  study of hi-tech firms on the West' Coast. She found that the average amount of time that an employee spent on a single piece of work was just 11 minutes - but the average time they managed to concentrate without being interrupted by incoming e-mails or other distractions was just three minutes. And each time they were interrupted, it would take 25 minutes, for them to get back up to speed.

How can anyone create error-free, high-quality work under that level of distraction? lt is the office equivalent of sleep deprivation. Literally.

Another recent study - by Dr Glenn Wilson of the University of London - found that the average worker's IQ 1 drops by ten points when distracted by incoming e-mails (and by telephone calls, although that’s an increasingly rare occurrence in most offices these days). A ten point drop in IQ is what you'd get from missing out on an entire night's sleep.

We are, of course, complicit in this ourselves. Nearly two-thirds of adults are "addicted" to checking their e-mails when they are on holiday or out of the office, according to Dr Wilson's study. lt's easy to kid yourself that this will reduce the amount of work you will have to face when you get back to the office, so it's not really damaging to your work-life balance. The  reality is, though, it can all too easily get out of hand; the London study found that 30% of people think it's okay to read and even write messages in a face-to-face meeting.

Going back to the cannabis analogy, most organisations these days have drug and alcohol policies, and they- quite rightly- see these as legitimate issues for employers. Yet hardly any are facing up to the problems we are experiencing thanks to the ubiquitous and increasingly  damaging piece of technology right under our noses.

TRADUCTION//

Le courrier électronique est une malédiction. Ses interruptions entravent sérieusement la concentration et la productivité et l'effet sur le QI est aussi mauvais que le tabagisme. À moins que vous ne le contrôliez, le courrier électronique est une menace qui vous contrôlera, avec des effets désastreux sur l'équilibre travail-vie personnelle et la productivité.

Le temps qu'il faut pour qu'une nouvelle technologie devienne une caractéristique omniprésente dans chaque maison et lieu de travail diminue constamment - pensez au temps qu'il a fallu au téléphone ou à la radio pour devenir des objets du quotidien, et en comparaison de la rapidité avec laquelle Internet s'est propagé. En conséquence, le temps dont nous disposons en tant que société pour s'adapter au changement et développer de nouvelles normes est désormais infinitésimal, ce qui explique en partie les effets secondaires morbides tels que la gifle heureuse à l'aide de mobiles.

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